This is the Princeton Hotel in 1932. It was built 20 years earlier by the Provincial Construction Company for William Ingram. It cost a very modest $17,000 to build and was designed by J H Bowman, and was described as having hot and cold water in each of the 33 rooms, and a billiards room in the basement. Mr Ingram was in real estate, living in the Woods Hotel from 1908 to 1911 and the Hotel Barron on Granville Street in 1912 and 1913. He seems to have been missed by the 1911 census, so we know very little about him from that source. However, the notice of his death tells us a bit more: he was described as ‘quite an elderly gentleman’ at the time of his death. He had been in the city for about two years, and had extensive property interests, and had a nephew, Bert Ingram also resident in the city. He had made his fortune in the Klondike before coming to Vancouver, and before that had been in Brandon, Manitoba, and had been born in Collingwood, Ontario.

His development history in the city wasn’t great; he built some frame houses in 1909 and 1910, the hotel in 1912 and an $8,000 apartment building on Victoria Drive a couple of months later. He died as a result of an unfortunate accident, falling while attempting to board a streetcar at the corner of Nelson and Granville in October 1913. The jury exonerated the crew of the car from any blame in connection with the fatality.

When the hotel opened there was a bank on the main floor, a branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, with P M Cochrane’s drug store next door and the Princeton Rooms upstairs managed by Mary Killeen. The bank closed in the early 1920s, and in 1925 the corner unit was vacant. The Cedar Cove Drug Store (with a sub post office) was next door. J J Murphy was running the Princeton Apartments upstairs. A year later the Princeton Hotel Beer Parlour (managed by J E Green) had taken over all of the main floor and the Princeton Hotel operated upstairs as a rooming house – and that’s the way things are today.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 99-4190

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